


Sunrise

by orphan_account



Category: Broadchurch
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-15
Updated: 2017-03-15
Packaged: 2018-10-05 16:14:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10312139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Hardy and Ellie watch the sun rise together.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Very quick fic for an anonymous prompt.

The sun rises early in June. Ellie still can’t sleep, so she rises with it. She pulls on her orange coat, which matches the kindling horizon she loves so well, and walks down to the water.

She is surprised to find she’s not the only one up early. A blue shape stands silhouetted against the sky, looking out across the sea with brooding intensity, as if locked in a silent struggle with some invisible antagonist that has taken up residence in his soul.

She calls out to him, cheerfully.

‘Can’t get away from you anywhere!’

He turns slowly. He looks terrible; grey and wan, and so thin he’s fit to blow away any second. Whatever or whoever he is struggling against is clearly winning.  

‘I don’t suppose you were able to sleep?’ she continues when she reaches his side.

He shakes his head. ‘Thought I’d come out here. Clear my head.’

‘Is it working?’

‘No.’

Ellie swishes side to side in her coat. Then she nudges his arm. ‘Walk with me. You can join me on my usual route.’

She leads the way and he wearily trudges after her.

‘You come here often?’ he asks.

‘Course. I try to walk the cliffs at least once a week. Haven’t kept it up because we’ve been so busy lately, but...’

The sun hasn’t quite peeped over the lip of the horizon, but the rim of the world is gleaming orange in anticipation. Towards the dark west, pink and purple linger like a ring of bruises on a woman's neck.

‘Best spot to watch the sun rise is just up here,’ she says, pointing. ‘You’ll have to hurry or we’ll miss it.’

Hardy lets out a huff, but he quickens his pace anyway.

‘You get any sleep last night?’ he asks.

‘About as much as you did, I reckon.’

‘We’ve got a lot of suspects to go through today,’ he says, passing his hands over his face. ‘Have to work on eliminating as many men as we can. Need to be sharp.’

‘You know what’d help with alertness,’ Ellie says slyly. ‘A hearty breakfast. You should come to mine after. I’ll get Fred up and we can have something together.’

Hardy deflects the offer with a shake of his head. ‘Want to see Daisy off to school.'

Ellie nods, nonplussed by the rejection. They make the rest of the climb in silence, and with some exertion they reach the place where the cliff begins to slope away towards the sea once more. Nestled in this secret spot is a small wooden bench. Ellie springs towards it and sits down, then pats the seat expectantly.

 Hardy looks at the seat for several moments, his keen detective’s eye finding the tiny commemorative plaque screwed into it.

‘Dedicated to the memory of James and Margaret Fawley,’ he reads, ‘who loved this place, and walked these cliffs together every day.’

He hums and sits down next to Ellie, each of them occupying half the seat, with the plaque gleaming between them. They say nothing, and watch as the sun splits the horizon and light radiates from the sea. It is as if the world is suddenly cloven in two, between the matchless immensity of blue sea and orange sky.

‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ Ellie says quietly.

Hardy does not reply. She glances at him.

‘I used to know them, actually.’

‘Hm?’

‘James and Margaret. As a kid, I used to see them walking the cliffs at sunrise, every day. Little doddery old man and his wife. He always wore a trilby, and she always had on this shawl.’ She smiles as she thinks of them. ‘They lived here their whole lives. Died when I was about ten, and put this seat here, on the cliffs, so people could sit and look out across the world they loved.’ 

A few seconds pass.

‘I used to come here with Joe.’

Hardy shifts with unease. Ellie rambles on quickly, unable to stop the confession from pouring out.

‘I joked that one day we’d be like James and Margaret. An old couple, still in love, still walking the cliffs together, like we did when we were young.’

She isn’t looking at the sun anymore. Her eyes are fixed on her hands in her lap, and she begins to pick and squeeze at the ghostly white band of flesh around her ring finger. 

Hardy is watching her with a troubled look on his face.

‘You’re the first person I’ve come here with since him.’

‘M’honoured,’ he says. ‘It’s beautiful here.’

She makes a noise between a scoff and a laugh. ‘You’re just saying that. I know you only come to the cliffs to be miserable.’

He shakes his head. 'I actually missed it.’

‘What, brooding?’

‘No. This.’ He gestures towards the sky. ‘The view. When I was away.’ Three heartbeats pass, and he adds, ‘among other things.’

The thought that he might truly like Broadchurch after all makes something bloom inside her. There is so much she wants to tell him about this place, about all the various ways it is woven into the fabric of her life. The trees she played in as a child, the secret paths no-one knows of but her, the place where she made countless daisy chains in the springtime.

The house where her grandfather died. The rockpools where she brought Tom as a toddler. The street corner where she'd had her first kiss.

The beach where Danny's body had been found, and where they'd first met.

She wants to tell him she still feels James and Margaret in this place sometimes, in the heavy cries of gulls and the crash of waves. She wants to tell him how she, too, is permeated with all the various scents and colours of this tiny wrinkle of land where she had been born, and where her life had unfolded, and how she can feel herself as one in a great chain, going back to her wrecker and smuggler ancestors, and forward to when her children are grown and she is buried in the churchyard, her bones and her ghost resting in the only home she has ever known, the home that Joe had almost stolen from her.

Almost.

And she had Alec to thank for helping to restore it to her.

The little blue house on the river, which had been home to both of them - that was written into her soul too, and into Broadchurch's history. The river would remember them, long after they were gone, she thought. The water carried memories like that.

‘I don’t think I told you,' she says, and a smile spreads across her face. ‘I’m glad you came back. This place wouldn't be complete… without you in it.’

Hardy blinks softly at her, not smiling, but showing a tenderness in his expression.

Then he stands, and throws his blue silhouette against the sky once more.

‘We should go. The kids’ll be waiting.’

Ellie stands up to complete the picture, and the two of them walk back towards Broadchurch as the sun rises behind them.

Maybe someday, Ellie thought, all of Broadchurch would be indelibly stained with images of their two selves together. Maybe the water and the wind would count years spent in each other's company, from their first meeting to their final parting.

Maybe they would come here together, still, to watch the sun rise when they were old. 


End file.
